SHARE

Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJI), the telecommunications arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, has announced an agreement with India’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd to share telecom infrastructure, the company said in a filing.

As per the agreement, the companies will share optic fibre network – inter and intra city, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services and other such opportunities identified in the future.

“The cooperation is aimed at avoiding duplication of infrastructure and to preserve capital and the environment. The arrangement may be extended to Roaming on 2G, 3G and 4G, and any other mutually benefiting areas relating to telecommunication, including but not limited to jointly laying optic fibre or other forms of infrastructure services. The pricing would be at ‘arm’s length’, based on the prevailing market rates,” Bharti said in the filing.

As part of this agreement, Bharti and Reliance Jio have already announced an agreement under which Bharti has provided capacity on its i2i submarine cable to Reliance Jio.

Bharti Infratel, a subsidiary of Bharti, is one of the largest tower infrastructure providers in India with 35,376 towers in 11 telecom circles across India. The company has 42 per cent stake in Indus Towers which has 112,144 towers in 15 telecom circles across India.